Blackwell Reference Online

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In the US, as in many other western countries, the link between the media and organized feminism goes back to the establishment of what in the west has been called “first wave feminism” in the nineteenth century. At the famous 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY the organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton sought to raise public awareness about women's rights by composing a Declaration of Sentiments modeled after the already sacrosanct US Declaration of Independence. Her Declaration elicited denunciatory press editorials. While she was unhappy about the misrepresentation of her ideas, Stanton understood the value of press attention. Subsequent waves of feminism continued to make use of media attention to achieve their ends, contributing to the discussion of the role of mass media in social movements, especially when messages are framed according to media practices contrary to the intent of the social movement ( Barker-Plummer 1995 ; →  Feminist and Gender Studies ). By the turn of the twentieth century, as mass newspapers became entrenched in everyday life in North America and many parts of Europe, organized feminism had become expert in utilizing media strategies. Alice Paul, founder and head of the National Women's Party (NWP), 1915, heavily relied upon the publicity techniques of confrontation and hunger strikes she had learned from British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst. ... log in or subscribe to read full text